How Do Teachers Use Textbooks and Other Print …

1 How Do Teachers Use Textbooks and Other PrintMaterials?A Review of the Literatureby Jeanne Moultonfor the Improving Educational Quality projectSeptember 1994 AcknowledgmentsJonathan Jansen, Director of the Improving Educational Quality project in South Africa,carefully reviewed the first draft of this study and made valuable suggestions forrevisions and additions. We thank him for his also thank Jane Shubert, Dena Duerbeck, and Gretchen Hummon for their supportand SummaryThis study was motivated by the research interest of the Improving Educational Quality(IEQ) project in South Africa, where the staff is working with South Africans to conductempirical research on textbook use in primary school classrooms. We wanted toreview the literature on textbook use, both in developing countries and in the find a striking contrast between the kinds of questions asked in developingcountries and those asked in the United States, and important differences in theconclusions drawn from the two lines of questioning.

2 Recent research in developingcountries stems largely from interest among World Bank staff--taking the economist sperspective--in determine the relative impact of Textbooks on student achievement. Inthe United States, the questions come from a pedagogue s perspective, who askswhat influences Teachers uses of Textbooks and how use varies among on their analyses of existing data and experimental studies, the World Bankresearchers are concluding that Textbooks make more of an impact on studentachievement than Other inputs. Yet their research methodology was based on theavailability of Textbooks in the classroom and rarely established links betweenavailability and use. This is especially interesting, because the two studies is whichuse is examined reveal a wide gap between the availability of Textbooks and their useby Teachers and students.

3 This raises the issue (which we do not explore) of whethertextbook availability is truly a significant input or merely a proxy for Other variables thatdistinguish more effective schools from less effective ones. The policy implication ofthe World Bank research is that limited resources should go to Textbooks prior to otherinputs, such as teacher in the United States, where resources for schools are not as scarce and theissue of prioritizing inputs is less critical, also leads us to rethink assumptions aboutthe value of Textbooks in the classroom. The questions addressed in the literature wereviewed are these:_How pervasive is the use of Textbooks ?_How do Teachers use Textbooks to plan and make decisions about instruction?_How do they rationalize their use Textbooks during the teaching-learningprocess?

4 _What use do they make of teacher 's guides?_What do they learn about Textbooks during their pre-service training?As guidance for the South African researchers, we describe the methodology used ineach of the studies pertaining to these questions. We also describe findings,which, in brief summary, are these:_Teachers seem to develop their own patterns of using materials, which theykeep from year to year and textbook to vary considerably in what these patterns look like and why they politicians and others outside the classroom tend to think textbooksdominate the classroom, Teachers often view them as only one of several use them effectively; others may misuse is difficult to find out how Teachers use Textbooks without actually observingthem do so. Likewise, it is difficult to find out what they think about their usewithout actually asking implications for South African researchers are that the availability of Textbooks byno means assures their use, and their use is likely to vary considerably fromteacher to teacher .

5 Observing how different Teachers use materials, and askingthem why they use them as they do should reveal significant information aboutthe teaching-learning process and how it can be of ContentsIntroduction1 Background1 Guiding questions1 Context2 Organization of the report3 Research in developing countries4 What indicators of "availability" are linked to student achievement?4 What indicators of "use" are linked to student achievement?6 What has been learned about materials use by observing classrooms7 Research in the United States13 How pervasive is the use of Textbooks ?13 How do Teachers use Textbooks in planning and making decisions aboutinstruction?15 How do Teachers rationalize their use Textbooks during the teaching-learningprocess?20To what extent do Teachers use teacher 's guides?26 What do Teachers learn about Textbooks in their pre-service training?

6 29 textbook use and student achievement31 Summary33 Conclusions36 Bibliography38 IntroductionBackgroundAn important conclusion of researchers during the past fifteen years is that theavailability of Textbooks in schools in developing countries is associated withstudent achievement: Students do better on tests when there are Textbooks inthe classroom (Heyneman et al. (1978), Fuller (1987), Fuller and Clarke (1993).Yet, we know very little about how Teachers actually use these Textbooks to helpstudents learn. In fact, we know little about this in either developing countries orin the United educators focus on Textbooks , they most often look at the quality of the books--their content and format--and their appropriateness for students in terms of their levelof vocabulary and ethnic and gender biases.)

7 Assuming that Textbooks dictatethe content of most instruction, educators, parents, and politicians want to knowwhat the books have to say. But what does it matter what they say if studentsrarely read them? And what if they spend lots of time reading them, but do notlearn from them?We have reviewed the literature with a primary interest in the data collection methodsused in empirical studies conducted on this topic. Our purpose is very researchers working with the Improving Educational Quality projectin South Africa want to learn more about how Teachers in the public elementaryschools for black children use the materials available to them. Most of thesematerials have been furnished by the government and are judged to be ofinferior quality. Many are supplemented with materials produced recently bynongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

8 These vary considerably fromconventional textbook , and are considered to be of higher only in recent years have educators from outside the government been allowed toenter classrooms or to ask questions about what Teachers and students , it is time to find out more about the teaching-learning process in thoseclassrooms and, in particular, how Teachers are using the materials they havebeen given and what the effects of that use has been on student inform this effort, we have reviewed the literature on the availability and use oftextbooks and Other Print materials in both developing countries and the questionsThe guiding questions for our review of the literature are:_What questions do researchers pose on the availability and use of materials?_How do they gather and analyze data to answer these questions?

9 _What are the contexts within which they have conducted research (what kinds ofschools, what countries, what subjects)?_What findings are emerging, particularly with regard to Teachers ' planning andinstruction and to student achievement?ContextSouth Africa is typical of Other third world states in which wealth and privilege areconcentrated within a minority. In South Africa, that minority happens to bewhite. In this respect, there are striking similarities between South Africanschools and those in Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. Although the whiteminority has built a modern infrastructure that, in many ways, reaches deep intothe country, most black Teachers and students continue to work in third worldconditions. Children have few resources for learning, and Teachers few , what we learn about Teachers ' use of Textbooks and Other materials inSouth Africa must come from research in South African schools.

10 Although thiscan be said about many aspects of educational research, it is particularly trueabout research on Textbooks . There is a body of research literature on the linksbetween textbook availability and student achievement in developing this does not apply to industrialized countries, where books are widelyavailable in schools, and in many schools in Asia and Latin America. In thesecountries, "the availability of Textbooks is no longer a useful indicator, by itself, ofschool quality." (Windham, p. 36).Within industrialized countries, there is also a small body of research literature onteachers' use of Textbooks . This research does not try to link textbook use tostudent achievement. Rather, it is concerned with the extent to which teachersrely on Textbooks and to which Textbooks constitute the classroom think that both of these groups of research have value in consideringresearch questions in South this review, we are concerned with the questions and the methods.